Funding Application
Business Describe the business you are proposing and how you will make it unique: The business is an online market place where people can buy and sell products and services from online multiplayer games. This website will be free for users and funded by selling webspace for promotions. The unique feature of this business is a more ethical and democratic option - a clearer consience for the buyer because the seller has some unique features including the ability to have less spam, a restriction on servers and a fair and nice working environment. Industry Background: *This business takes place within the online industry where people play massively-multiplayer online games, like World of Warcraft, to gather virtual goods and services that other players purchase in exchange for real-world dollars (more information here and here) *Around 400 000 people globally earn a full-time living in this industry. A 2009 study from within the World Bank valued the this market at over $3bn per annum globally. (More on this study here). *Most commonly, farmers collect in-game currency (known as gold farming) or build high-level characters/avatars (known as power leveling) which are then sold to wealthy players who are willing to exchange their money for the time taken to perform these tasks. The problems *Spamming *Unfairness *Exploitation: This is caused by the fact that gold farmers are typically very poor. Their bosses allow them to use computers, and in exchange push them to spam and work very hard. These bosses then sell the gold on the workers behalf, and take a cut. In order to sell at the cheapest price, businesses usually employ very poor people in developing countries. These people typically work long hours, in bad conditions, and for poor pay. Many gold farming operations have been compared to sweatshops. Uniqueness: We hope to offer a service where buyers of gold and levelling can do so with a better conscience. There is a gap in the market for a company that can offer a place where buyers can connect to farmers directly and ethicaly. *Users get to buy cheap virtual goods and services that they know are humane and not exploitative. *Farmers get to keep all their earnings, better work conditions, and more freedom to determine their own work hours. For three reasons: the gold is farmed by people who are given better options than they are currently getting. Better conditions, better pay, and more flexible hours. The gold is sweat shop free. the gold is farmed by people who promise not to spam in the game. this makes it better for everyone. the gold farmers listen to players about thier habbits, and try to avoid areas and servers where players really desire not farming. We publish this, so players against gold farming can choose those servers that are reserved, and other players can choose those that aren't. We as a global guild of farmers agree on a list of servers where we will and will not farm. Structure: ::1. Help build a centre for the workers where they all lead themselves: ::A place where the computers and bandwidth have been donated, and aren’t expected to return on the investment. This would allow farmers to not have someone take a cut of their wage. Because they can now earn more, they might be able to work more freely, according to their needs. For this part of the mission we're going to raise a few thousand dollars on kickstarter. :2. Build a portal that connects these farmers directly to buyers: :This will be a website where farmers can sell their goods and services directly to buyers without commission – they can charge their own price and keep it all. For buyers, this will be a place to purchase gold and services that is humane and non-exploitative, and perhaps even cheaper (no intermediaries). Market research: Who are your customers? Describe the type of customer who will be targeted for your product or service: common characteristics of your potential customers how do they behave when making purchases? (Consider the use of a survey, posing as a potential customer when contacting a similar business, talking/networking with people who deal with your competitors and reviewing promotional information from similar businesses). Where are your customers to be found? Describe the geographic profile of your target market: For the moment we are going to focus on the Australian gold farming market. Every Australian person who buys goods or services in MMOs is a potential customer. That is true globally, but our test case and marketing and focus will initially be the Australian market. For marketing we will focus on gamers who play WOW and Guild Wars on Australian servers. But for potential customers, any player of any game with an in-world economy anywhere in the world. For Wow this is around 10 million players, and 30% buy gold. What motivates your potential customers to buy, and why would they choose to buy from you instead of purchasing from other businesses that offer similar products or services? Ethical. A better consience. No spamming. Also, a very competitive price because the trade is very free and efficient - a direct connection between player and farmer so intermediaries are reduced. ' ''' '' it provides them with a clearer consience. it should also be cheaper as it cuts out intermediaries? ' This allows Alex to buy gold that doesn't bring a bad conscience, doesn't spam the game, and cuts out the intermediaries. Her friends say its like fair-trade coffee but for goldfarming. She feels better about buying gold. Awareness - how will your customers know that your business exists? How/where will they find you? (For example, Yellow Pages, Internet) – list options below: On the internet in three ways: 1. in world - we will play these games and talk with players in-game. Not spam but talk. 2. in forums - gold farming (both the good and the bad) is discussed often and by lots of players in the forums for each game. We will put forward this idea and offer to those players who are looking for a better solution to the problem. 3. Through our wiki - we are creating a wiki on the subject of improving gold farming. Where lots of people can discuss the project of making gold farming and power leveling better - better for everyone. We hope all of these will lead people to visit our website, learn more, and buy gold and leveling. I also have friends in real-life who play games and are friends with other people who play games. I hope to positivily interact with these people about the project to spread interest. Competition Who do your potential customers currently do business with? Provide information about prices, strengths of competition businesses and what the competition business could do better: There are many, some of the best are: IGE IGE.com is one of the oldest Wow gold site on the net, having been around since 2001. They back up their sales with the IGE Guarantee and over 3 million gold deleveries to their credit. Payment is easy as they accept PayPal, credit cards, debit cards and Western Union. They are Verisign secured and are BizRate certified. This is one of the most trusted Wow Gold sellers around. Also check them out for currency used in Age of Conan, EverQuest and many, many more. Check them out by clicking here, you won't be dissapointed. Also view a video walkthrough of buying gold from Ige.com here. Guy4Game Guy4Game.com has been in the gold game for a long time and continue to be a leading provider of WoW gold. They accept credit cards, PayPal, Western Union and certified checks. They also offer wholesale pricing. Guy4Game offers powerleveling and account sales to round out their all in one stop shopping experience. They are Verisign certified, BizRate certified and a PayPal world seller. You simply can't go wrong with Guy4Game, visit them by clicking here. Also view a video of how to buy gold from Guy4game here. Bank of WoW Bankofwow.com has been a leader in Wow gold sales for quite some time now. They offer to match and beat any Wow gold store price. We tested this on seperate occasions and they did indeed match and beat their competitors pricing. They accept a variety of payment options including Credit cards, Paypal and Western Union. Customer service is one of their strong points as they offer Live Chat 24/7 and also email support. Bank Of Wow is a trusted Wow gold seller who has been Paypal certified since 2004, is BizRate Certified and is also a member of Square trade. Please visit there site and check them out yourself by clicking here. View a video walkthrough of buying from Bank of Wow here. WOWGold2K They offer different prices for different regions. US is 1.06 for 1000G, while in Britain the price is 1.90 per 1000G. This is before the exchange rate. the price difference is due to demand and timezones. Less farmers play the british servers so the supply is lower nd the price is higher. WOW Gold Studio They have a nice site and live chat and promotional content. The biggest websites currently are - *Other gold farming operations. Maybe this needs to be a project where we build a 'free studio' or gold farming centre in more than one place simultaneously: China, Vietnam, India, Mexico, Phillipines, Romania - and do it all together. Form this ethical union and that connects online, enabled by the crowd-funded studios. *MMO operaters like Blizzard? They are generally against gold farming. But could this help them? *Gamers who are against gold farming. Perhaps these new gold farmers could agree to some rules, given by the players. No spamming, no hacking. These could be the basis of membership in the ethical farmers guild. There would still be blackhats who don't obey. We can allow reporting and exile. While exile offers freedom from the rules, there are distinct benefits to participating. They charge - Their strengths - economies of scale. They have no commitment to studios at all. They can take the cheapest gold from the cheapest seller. They are like the woolies of sydney. What I am offering then is something like a farmers market - a place where people can go and they might not be thinking about absolutely the cheapest. They might be willing to pay more for certain things. In our case, ethics, no spamming, and server selection.Explained more below. Your competitive advantage: What advantages can you offer your potential customers, to influence them to change their buying habits and buy from you? What will your business offer that is better than your competition? What, in your opinion, are your weaknesses in comparison to your competitors? Advantages: good consience no spamming less hate: they can elect which servers not to farm on. These farmers are accountable. Maybe sometimes they will have to break the rules, but we will discuss. At least this farmers listen. they should be less hated than others. Sales How do you intend to obtain sales? In regards to the sale of advertising space, initially we will explore the standard adsense or provider model that is used on many sites like Wikia. These ads are general ads not specific to the community. They're not as enjoyable, but they seem to work. We will see how much revenue these generate. But ideally we would do something more enjoyable for us, as users. Some attempt to make the ads of real interest and benenfit sometimes. As much as possible, a win-win situation for those involved. This approach will take more work though - either the task of forming relationships with possible good partners, or the use of some open software that resembled Facebook's where users can downvote and upvote certain ads and thereby improve their own experience. In regards to transactions between players, this will be enabled by widely-used online market software, similar to eBay. The aim is to create as few obstacles as possible between the seller and the buyer. Currently we are looking into a free and open-source PHP script called Open Source Classifieds but there are others. In the end we will probably use another solution. We don't really know how the market will work best yet - more as a social network a little bit. In this case we might use something like this: BuddyPress, which is a WordPress derived social network platform, integrated with the MarketPress plugin to offer e-commerce services. More info here and here. How much of your product or service are potential customers likely to buy from you? Average units might be about 100 gold a sale. But anywhere from there up to $1000. Average price for this at the moment is 10 - 100 dollars. And would take about x hours to earn. What pricing will be effective for you and your customers? We would like to charge no commission on the sale. For pricing of our ads, we would need to negotiate with partners. How much per space. Will your sales be seasonal? Yes in the sense that gold farming depends on new content in the games. There is more content being released in World of Warcraft this year, so this is a great time to be launching a new farming business. Until then, demand for gold should stay about the same. But there will be a large leap when that expansion is released. The same is true for Guild Wars. When GuildWars II comes out, there will be a big demand for gems/gold. After some months this will flatten out, but hopefully remain above previous levels due to the expanded world and growth of players. Then the next patch, expansion or game is released. We hope this will be occuring twice a year. Market testing: Have you offered your product or service on a hobby basis, on a “market testing” basis or through other employment? List below: We have written a market testing survey which we have published online through our wiki. We are also sending this to networks of gamers. We will waiting to collect the results. The 'feel-good' gap in this industry has been demonstrated by the World Bank, and a report by Richard Heeks at the University of Manchester. There is a huge space in this industry for a comany that was offering 'gold' or virtual work that was ethical and gave buyers a better conscience. The 'spamming' gap in this industry has been demonstrated in multiple articles and forums about the gold farming industry. Many players feel it ruins the game. By making farmers autonomous, this allows buyers to report them directly to us, and us to form a guild of farmers who comit to no spamming. If you have undertaken market testing - what did your first customers buy? (If no market testing has taken place, which products/services do you believe your first customers will buy?) We offered a choice in the service between gold farming and power levelling, and which games they might like. Participants will discuss their preferred service and preferred game. What comments were made about your product or service? We have a question where participants can talk about the service. We will wait to hear results. List any other information that relates to market testing for your product or service: How will you fund the business? (e.g., personal funds, bank loan, family loan) Through this grant and a kickstarter campaign. Conclusion: Read through this business proposal to assess how well you think you have presented it and note your comments below: There are lots of things still to be worked through. The task is to identify the problems and develop solutions.